London 2012 Olympic shame: How the local press have been locked out of the games

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The UK regional press may comprise more than 1,200 titles serving at least 33m readers a week – but so far it has been allocated just a handful of press passes to cover the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The vast majority of the 400 non-broadcast press passes allocated for the event appear to have gone to the nationals – leaving local papers often unable to set foot in Olympic venues on their doorsteps.

The Newspaper Society is lobbying for an extra 12 places to be granted for reporters to file pooled reports which will be shared by all the UK’s regional newspapers. But editors have complained that this will still deny their readers the grassroots coverage of local events and competitors. Read all Press Gazette’s coverage of the Olympic press lock-out by clicking on the links below.